


the winter after (extra scenes)

by shadesoflondon



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: ;'), CHECK THE CHAPTER NOTES FOR ANY TRIGGER WARNINGS!!, F/M, cover your eyes children, if not that then at least a lot of Darkling content, it's literally what the title says, so... yes, tbh there'll probably be a LOT of alarkling interactions here, the smut train has arrived?, will update as the story progresses - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2020-12-04 03:18:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20959844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesoflondon/pseuds/shadesoflondon
Summary: Extra scenes from the winter after! I'm not too far along in the fic yet, but I already have a few things I feel like throwing out there. Just for shits and giggles.The rest is just a random hodgepodge of scenes that I feel like sharing but that don't warrant their own fic.





	1. Snowstorm

**Author's Note:**

> This first thing here is a Darkling POV that I wrote back when I still thought this fic would take place at the cabin (and only the cabin). The story idea has evolved so much since then, but I still adore this scene, and I’m very glad that I have a place to share it. Even if it's a rough draft...  
fun fact the Darkling’s POV is a fucking nightmare.

Alina was buried on the floor in a mound of blankets, her white hair a tangled mat around her. She was still a pale, skinny thing like she was when they met. But her summoning had helped fill out her form and bring life to her eyes. 

The fire flickered in front of them. He was sitting in the chair, drinking a glass of _ kvas. _ From the corner of his eye, he watched the steady, strong rise and fall of her chest.

The way he thought where Alina was concerned frustrated him. She made him too impulsive, too emotional. She made him think like a _ man, _made him think about things he hadn’t cared about in centuries. 

He hated the way she wore her hair down, and how it added depth to the plains of her face. He hated the darkness of her eyes. The soft shape of her lips. Loathed the way she moved; too gentle to be a soldier, too clumsy to be a dancer. There was a purpose he could almost respect in each of her steps, but if he let himself do anything other than hate, he knew it would weaken him. He didn’t think about how hatred was still too strong an emotion.

He imagined the thrum of her pulse beneath her skin, the feel of it against his teeth. He frowned a little and sloshed his glass. Alina stirred. When she stilled, he imagined pinning her to the wall, his hands lifting her thighs to him, and taking her just like that. The sounds she would make. How she would say his name, clutch him closer. Her fingers would claw into his back and he would savor the pain, because it meant that she wanted him and not that stupid boy she thought she loved. 

The thoughts were disgusting. Useless. Weak. He pushed them away, silencing them, but when a whimper left her lips from the floor, he found himself clutching his glass a bit tighter. Desire was a mistake that only fools made. Yet sometimes he let himself wonder about their union. If when they took Ravka together, she would accept their connection, she would want him. If she would call him to her bed and beg for his touch. 

Bruises on her hips. Bite marks on her thighs, her exposed neck, the slope of her breasts. He downed the rest of his _ kvas _and wiped his mind clean. 

There were things he couldn’t tell her yet. Things she shouldn’t know until she was ready and beyond the stupid beggar act. He forced himself to focus on that. 

But his mind drifted to when she had curled into him in the bed earlier. Her body was stiff and her feelings steeled off. But the sensation of her pressed against him still awoke that _ feeling _ inside of him, and when he couldn’t force his reaction down, he had to get up before she noticed. So he went to the bathroom, leaned against the closed door, and buried his hands in his hair. He refused to touch himself. It took a minute or two, but his body calmed down. It was absolutely pathetic that he couldn’t even lay beside her without losing control of himself.

She was his. Even if she didn’t know it yet, she was his. Alina hadn’t been around for as long as him and didn’t understand the way things worked. She needed him, just as he needed her. How he loathed to admit that. But he was beyond denying that he needed her company and had made a fool of himself too many times to claim otherwise.


	2. Alina begs & Aleks is... an ass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part one was originally going to be longer, but I cut a lot out. This is a bit ooc for both characters, but I liked it enough to not want to throw it away. Alina begs the Darkling to give her more time in her cabin… or something… and he’s a complete asshole.

I sank to the snow at his feet. My hands came up to grab his kefta, the chill biting through my fingers.

“What is it you want?” I pleaded. “Me at your feet? Me at your side? I will give it to you, you just need to _ tell me_.” 

I hated this⎯ I hated sinking myself down to something lesser than him, someone who was at his complete mercy. But my feelings were an unimportant thing next to the lives of my friends, and if begging was what it took to keep them safe, I would do it without hesitation.

“I was not made to be your balance,” I said. “I was made to decide my own path. And this is the path I choose, if you agree to leave the people I care about alone.”

His eyes were cool and unwavering as he stared down at me. He looked unimpressed, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to feel ashamed.

“I want your tracker dead,” he said coldly. “Give me that, and we will talk.”

With that he turned away, leaving me gaping on the ground. That was something he knew I would never do. A wave of rage overtook me, stifling out everything else. If begging didn’t work, what would? Using force would only cause him to lash out. I growled, but his long legs continued their stride.

Self restraint forgotten, I balled up a mound of snow and threw it at his head. He froze as it made contact. Snow coated the black of his hair, spilling onto his kefta. I wondered if he felt the impact, or if it was only the echo of a feeling.

“Alina,” he turned to look at me. “This is _ childish. _” 

“Right. Because compassion is _ childish_,” I mocked.

“Compassion is not what will keep this country together.”

I laughed, throwing my hands into the air. “You’re right,” I said. “Compassion is most certainly _ useless _ when you’re ruling a country full of _ people. _Everyone loves an iron fist!” 

“You forget who you’re speaking with.”

I smiled. Then I flipped him off.

He was on me in an instant, grabbing the collar of my coat and lifting me to my knees. I drew in a sharp breath. “Do that again,” he said calmly. Our faces were nearly nose to nose, and he looked down at me with lips slightly parted. 

“Okay,” I breathed. And I did. He shoved me into the snow, and I landed with a gasp on my back. The Darkling straddled me. A sharp burst of panic sounded through me when he pinned my hands above my head. “Get off of me,” I panted. My leg moved to kick him, but he restrained it with a band of _ merzost_. Everything in me quieted when our hips pressed together.

"I’m going to break you,” he growled, “in ways you’ve never been broken before.” 

This time, he was too slow. My other knee came up to shove him off of me. A laugh fell from his lips as he stood, a cold and cruel sound. 

“What if that was what I desired from you?” he asked. I did not miss the hint of mockery in his words. “Would you give yourself to me in that way?”

Repulsion flooded like fire through my veins, making my hands shake and face twist. Our eyes locked, and I tried to find it in myself to say no. To draw the line somewhere⎯ to value my honor. But when thinking of my friends, again, I knew I would do anything for their sake. I looked away. 

The Darkling made a disgusted noise. “I suppose your dedication is honorable,” he said. “Thankfully for us both, that is not what I want.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want you to keep your dignity, Alina, and to stop acting like a sniveling peasant.”

I hissed. “You should be the one thinking about dignity, Darkling. Climbing all over me in the snow is unbecoming.”

“You’re funny,” he said, in a way that suggested otherwise. “Get up.”

He offered no hand to help, and I was left to cut away the shadow on my leg alone. It dissipated as my light touched it, folding in and filing itself out of existence. I shivered at the dampness of my clothes.


	3. please

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not from TWA, but is actually from the light in the dark, which I will probably not be updating any time soon. 
> 
> It’s alarkling all the same. I was going through the TLITD doc today and saw this idea I had spit up and went... “holy shit?”  
My drafts are hardly ever this coherent and I thought this ought to see the light of day! So... yes.

_ I leaned upward into his chest, my arms circling around his neck. His lips were on mine in an instant. The kiss was deep, sparking a flame somewhere deep inside of me. Not desire- something else. His grip on my hips tightened. “Alina,” he ground out, pulling away. “Come back. Come with me. Please.” _

_  
_ _ This was the first time ever I’d ever heard him say please. I hated that it tore me in two; I couldn’t go back with him. I had a mission, a goal, and it didn’t involve being someone’s stepping stool. _ _ But when he was looking into my face like that, with something like vulnerability, I found the word no hard to voice. “Aleksander,” I whispered. His eyes fluttered closed. Our lips brushed again, and I forced myself to pull back. We were alike as no one else was, as no one else would ever be. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forget to mention: it’s very short! Sorry :)


	4. men like you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so I felt really bad about making the last update so short!! This is old and a very very rough draft, but eh
> 
> Here’s another snippet from the same fic. Aleksander is soooo out of character, and if anyone knows who Jericho Barrons is, he definitely gives me that vibe here. Enjoy?

I watched in the mirror as he bit my shoulder. Slowly, his hands came again to rest at my hips. The touch was sure; gentle. The same could not be said for his teeth. I gasped at the hot feel of his tongue on my skin, and he took that as a sign of encouragement, pressing closer and knocking me completely into the dressing table. Containers of perfume bottles and brushes rattled and fell over. The image of him bending me over the vanity came swiftly mind, but I dismissed it. It was getting harder and harder to think by the second. I glanced back into the mirror at us, and found him watching me from beneath his lids. A low whimper slipped from me as he nipped at the sensitive base of my neck.

This wasn’t right. Even now, it wasn’t right.

I turned abruptly, shoving him away as quickly as I could. The breaths leaving my lungs were shaky but my resolve was not. Signing a piece of paper and handing myself over to Ravka did not mean handing myself over to the man had manipulated me into that position. 

“You’re pushing me away?”

More than anything, he looked confused. It would’ve amused me under any other circumstance. 

“Yes,” I breathed. Both panting and frozen in place, our gazes locked. His was dark and very, very unamused. It would’ve unnerved me once.

“And may I ask why?”

“Because,” I said, “I’ve been with men like you before, and-” 

He laughed, the sound jarring enough that I froze. “Little_ solntse_, I really don’t think you’ve been with a man like me before.”

“Forever egotistical, are we?” I couldn’t keep the sneer from my voice. 

“It’s true and you know it,” he said, walking forward. I backed away and into the vanity. All humor had fled his expression. Now it was absolutely predatory, and I felt pinned in place. 

“I _ have _ been with men like you before,” I said, pressing both of my hands to his chest. I looked into his eyes as I leaned forward. 

“Cold.”

He looked to my mouth.

“Manipulative.” 

My hand came to rest on his cheek.

“Controlling,” I continued. His eyes flickered back up to mine.

“Hungry.” 

The air between grew thick as I paused. 

“You’re an asshole, and I’ve been with those before.” Before he could interrupt, I moved a finger to his mouth. “And... I’ve found that most assholes are only after one thing. When they get it, they lose interest. Unfortunately, for my agenda, I still need you interested in me. For as long as that remains,” I brushed my lips against his, _ “you don’t get to have me.” _

A sound not unlike a snarl unfurled from his throat as he backed away.

“_I’m _the manipulative one?” He seethed. 

“Where do you think I learned to play this game?”

“This is not a game_.” _

“Is it not? You like to play with me.”

“I don’t want to _ play _ with you. I want to take you on that desk and feel your fingernails down my back. I want to hear you moan my name, and to fuck you so good that you forget _ Oretsev _even exists.”

I blinked once, then twice. Brute honesty wasn’t usually Aleksander’s style.


	5. bed wrestle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **please read the trigger warning here!**
> 
> A smut snippet I wrote because I got writer's block on my twa update AND on my oneshot side project. Somehow THIS gave me no trouble. *facepalm* Extreme first draft disclaimer because I literally just sat down and shat this up as an exercise. (Content is still content, I get it)
> 
> More cabin what-ifs. Overly forward Darkling. No sex, but what happens is essentially non-con. If that makes you uncomfortable, don’t read this chapter.

“Oh, saints, no, no, _ no— _”

The Darkling laughed against my throat, baring those teeth—those incisors—against the ticklish skin of my jugular. From the way I arched away from him I knew he could feel it moving, feel my pulse racing like a rabbit, like an animal caught in a trap. Which I was.

Literally. 

On the pillows above my head he had my hands pinned down with his own, and despite my writhing, I was unable to unhook his iron-tight grip. An attempt went to focusing my attention on that as he began pressing kisses—if they could be called kisses, those mean, harsh, wet things—down my ear to my collar bone.

“Get off. Get off!”

“Not very eloquent, are we?”

I aimed a kick to his shin, but as there was not much space between his body and my own, the blow didn’t land. He responded by molding the length of himself over me completely. My squirming wasn’t helping, it was only encouraging him more, and any inch of touching skin was battleground lost. I stopped. I couldn’t afford to lose. 

“You utter ass," I spat at him. "I don’t owe you eloquence!”

He pulled his head up to stare into my face. Angry blood pooled in my cheeks, and I again tried and failed to squirm my way out. 

“How funny it is that you talk about owing.”

He moved and I was shoved down by the force of him, unable to breathe. A cramp was forming in my legs, so I unfurled them and braced both of my knees around his thighs, ignoring the tightening squeeze of his fingers around my wrists. What I couldn’t ignore was the dry inseam of his trousers now scraping over my cunt. Blood rushed there—so much blood rushed there—and his knee slid up between my legs to tease it into slickening. He subtly, _ very _subtly, dragged up and down, and I lacked the force of will it would have taken to keep from keening.

“I don’t owe you _ this_,” I gasped.

“You owe me revenge. And I’m going to steal it from you in gasps, in moans, until the Alina Starkov who drove a knife into me is dead. And I think,” he said, “that you secretly want that.” He traced down the crook of my neck with his lips, then up it again with his tongue. His breath was harsh in my ear. 

It was horrible. The way my nerves lit up like a light on the Fold, the utter betrayal of the pounding below his knee—sickening. Yet I had since gone slack. My hands strained under his hold, but there was a shift in the wind, and he could smell it on me. 

He bit my shoulder. His leg slid back and his hand went under my dress. It glided up, brushing over my calves before pressing down on my knee and chafing between my thighs. The wooden slats of ceiling above my head went out of focus.

“Aleksander,_ please. _”

He made a punctual exhale against my jaw.

“Please.”

“Please what, _ Alina? _”

“Dont—”

“Don’t do this?” He asked innocently. And then a single finger was sliding under my garments, sliding into me, and I was seizing up as if paralyzed. He groaned into my neck, satisfied with the stickiness there—and there must have been so much of it, considering how quiet rational thought was becoming—then he pulled out that lone finger and returned with two; two curling devils that scraped my upper insides.

This wasn’t how anything was supposed to work. We were still clothed, and this was the _ Darkling_, and I was unspooling under his hand like the wanton young girl at the fete. But I no longer tried to fight him.

An absent need lifted my hips. He continued that, curving his fingers up and fast, then began to rub his thumb on the spot above my cunt. My thighs squeezed around his hips in an entirely instinctual fashion, in the same way my breathing stuttered, in the same way my goal had shifted from getting _ away _ to getting him _ deeper_.

“Come on, Alina,” he groaned. 

My feet sliced through the sheets around us, my head tipped back. I was too far gone to cage in the little cries that sought release. He wrung a full moan from me, then two, then an orgasm that sent the world going white. Shaking, it took a moment for me to remember to exhale. He pulled back to assess me. We stared at each other, both breathing heavily.

“That,” he said, removing his hand from me. “That is dying.” 

“Are you done?”

His grey eyes were dark. Clinical. “Not with you. I will never be done with you.”

I growled. He let go of my wrists,_ finally _—and finally, I lunged to punch him square in the mouth.


	6. revenge is (not) sweet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beepbeepboopboop. More warm up randomness. Some playing around with POV.

He had her hair bunched in his fist and his knife under her chin. She hung limply, no longer fighting. 

He sneered. All it took was getting to Oretsev first, drawing a smile into his neck. That weak little life force bled onto the floor and over Alina’s hands, where she had scrambled to reverse the irreversible. 

The light in her eyes was already put out, like a dead candle in a dark window. For a fragment of a moment he considered finding another punishment. Something merciful. But he remembered her  _ mercy _ on the Fold, the way she cried over the corpse of that stupid  _ otkazat’sya  _ twat. It was only right that the favor was returned.

“Don’t hesitate,” she said, staring through his eyes and into the void waiting beyond. 

He didn’t. Her blood splattered over his kefta, and he wiped the blade over his sleeve. 

She was nothing.


	7. The Darkling Is "Frustrated"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While Alina lived in the cabin, the Darkling lived at his camp. Here he takes out his frustrations. The Darkling with other people is a bit of a squick for me, as I’m sure it is for some of you guys as well, but I think my intentions here are pretty clear… lol. 
> 
> And sure. This is canon to the winter after universe if you’d like, because why not.

Dunya was a small young woman, with limbs like the willowy branches of a birch and a long shock of pale hair. Her eyes were a wide, kind coffee brown. She was Grisha, not a very popular girl in camp, but her loyalty to the cause was unshakable.

Currently, Dunya was bent over the Darkling’s table.

He wouldn’t look at her face, just focused on the hair spilling over her back, the small fold of her body against his. Her narrow hips burned under his hands. She gasped as he moved: loud, incessant. The mewling that assaulted his ears wasn’t all from pleasure, he knew; he was being unfavorably rough with her - 

Her voice was too shrill. Not the right drawling rasp. Her eyes held no flame when she looked at him and were instead dumb and soft, like an untrained pup. He hated her, for who she was and who she wasn’t, and he hated himself for being so weak as to succumb to boyish urges.

So he was rough.

After this, he would send her on a mission of which she’d likely not return. She’d be off before nightfall, because if rumor spread that he had taken a pale haired woman into his tent, there would be no going back from it. He would wipe his hands of her and forget she existed.

And the night after next, he would set off for Alina.


	8. ship tryst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boat smut!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I'm not dead!
> 
> This is deleted content from a one-shot I've been nearly done with forever. Because of how questionable it is, I'm afraid I may never post it. Tonally, this is hugely different, hence why it was cut!
> 
> A smut snipped from the time in S&S they were on the boat: enjoy!

The boat dipped around us. Nausea swelled in me, up and up and up, but I held fast to his shoulders and did not let go. “You must love your tracker very much,” he murmured, “to bed me for him.” 

I pressed a hand to his mouth, pained. He smiled a closed mouth smile against my fingers.

“Be. Quiet.”

There was a violence in the gentle way his hands curved over my backside, in the way he eased me down farther, in the small kisses he peppered along my collar. 

_Be rough_. _Be rough._ _Be rough._

But he only eased me on softly, rocking me down against him gentler than the waves rolling outside the wide clouded windows.

He was tender, he was wicked; he was measured, he was vicious.

He was a constellation of contradictions and I _ hated _ him. I hated having to be here, undressed in his bed. But from atop I could see the appeal of this game. I could see the power to be had, the dignity to be stolen. I wanted to hear him drawn to his baser self. I wanted to rip that cold, smug gleam from off his face, and I wanted him to feel the tumult of _ liking me doing it_.

“Did you know,” he asked darkly, “that they are calling you a saint?” His hands brushed with a slow possessiveness over my hips.

“A saint?” I rocked over him, moving to palm my own breasts. He didn’t blink, but his fingers curled sharply into the skin of my bottom. His breathing had grown more shallow, and I only just now noticed— 

The unshakeable Darkling was being shaken. In a moment of boldness, I rolled my hips over the skin on his pelvis. Then I pulled up once, and slammed down. A sharp sound left his throat. His eyes narrowed into shrewd points. I pulled up again, and slammed, then continued rolling my hips until he growled. His hands rose to cage my wrists. 

“Men are so easy,” I said, my eyes squinted in a mockery of his glower. “Squeeze their cock right and they’ll just—” He bucked up then, shoving from me a surprised mewl. His hands released me so they could grab my backside, as if he wanted to flip me back onto my back. 

_ “No.” _I pushed him down into the mattress as hard as I could.

But I was small next to him, weak, and he sat up without effort. I tried again to shove him down, but he pinned my hands behind my back. He moved to lean over me, and I countered by maneuvering my knees between our bodies to hold him off.

We stared at each other. With a frustrated sigh, he picked me up like a doll and pushed me against the wall.


End file.
